


I Will Never Leave You Alone

by kayura_sanada



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: BAMF Hancock, BAMF Sole Survivor, Blood, Bomb Based Loosely On 'Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes' Game, Bombs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear, Hurt/Comfort, Just Another Day In The Commonwealth, M/M, Trapped, Trapped With A Bomb, Worry, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:29:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: On the other side of the door is Hancock. And a bomb.Fulfills the 'Tears of Fear' slot in my Bad Things Happen bingo card.
Relationships: John Hancock/Male Sole Survivor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	I Will Never Leave You Alone

“Gross,” Hancock said. He reached out one wrinkled hand and plucked offal from Shen’s helmet. “You’re not supposed to wear them, Shen.”

He laughed. “I’m not allowed trophies?”

Hancock wrinkled his nasal cavity. “As if these idiots are worth saving any from. Even their stocks are poor.” They looked around. The building had once been a small medical facility, more like a veterinary clinic than a hospital or a distribution center. The place had already been well wiped out by the raiders that had camped within. Shen helped Hancock find the last pieces of gore and cleaned himself up as best he could.

Then it was Hancock’s turn; of the two of them, the one more likely to rush out stupidly was actually Hancock. Somehow, Hancock had managed to avoid the worst of the spray this time. Hancock took his hat off to check the cloth. On instinct, Shen looked around. The room they stood within was a long, open corridor, the edges still lined with a few broken cages. Inside had been a few items, mostly meat. If cooked properly, it could still be salvaged. Anything else, however, had been gleaned from the bodies around them. There hadn’t been much.

After getting themselves a bit cleaner, they went through the rest of the building. A few unchecked med kits and a locked safe – wielding little more than old, pre-war cash and a few bullets – were all they salvaged from the entire thing. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “at least there’s a few less raiders here now.”

Hancock smirked. “I’d say that’s a win.”

They shared a smile. In the sudden silence, Shen caught a humming sound. He tilted his head. “Do you hear that?”

Hancock listened. He tilted his head and made a noise of consideration. “It’s coming from over here.” Hancock led them over to a small office space. The only things still standing in the room was the thick metal desk and a wreck of a computer sitting in front of where a chair should have sat. Shen moved to the computer, but the sound wasn’t originating from it. Hancock continued past him, not even pausing at the desk, and stopped in front of the wall. “Huh.” He knocked on it. Understanding what he was doing, Shen moved to another wall and tapped on it, as well. He frowned. They sounded the same. The wall he’d knocked on connected to the open hallway. He walked across the room and knocked on the wall that sectioned off the building from the world beyond. He knocked again. This time, it was different. Thicker. “Well, well,” Hancock murmured. He pulled out his gun.

“Hold it.”

Hancock did, nearly adopting a ridiculous frozen stance before he returned to Shen’s side. “Got something?”

“The humming sound. It’s coming from behind the wall, sure, but there should have been something connecting whatever’s back there to…” He eyed the computer, searching for, if not wires anymore, then certainly scorch marks where the radiation would have fried them. He found one when he wriggled the desk a bit; the desk’s metal had helped burn the wire. He eyed the line for a moment, then tried to follow it out. He found another scorch mark at the far corner of the wall. Following it up revealed a tiny keypad, so small it almost looked like a light switch. He grunted in triumph. “Got it.”

“Nice,” Hancock commented, then, a beat later, “Nothing like watching you work that beautiful mind of yours to make a man… invested.”

Shen flushed. The grin that overtook him muddled his ability to study the contraption for a moment. “Like what you see?” he asked, reaching up slightly and turning on the Pip-Boy’s light to help him see better.

“Always.”

His grin widened. The small machine had a keypad. He couldn’t hope to find something in the desk, but he waved Hancock toward it, anyway. “See if there’s something in there.” Hancock paused long enough that Shen was certain he was eyeing his ass, but finally he turned away and started opening drawers. Shen eyed the machine. If they were lucky, whatever wires this thing had also had wires that led into whatever space they were trying to enter. Hence the buzzing sound.

The numbers he needed to press were obvious enough; they’d faded over time. Still, he hesitated; this sort of equipment was not normal for a veterinary office, and he wasn’t willing to risk getting the answer wrong when he could no longer be certain this was a simple medical facility. He opted to open the tiny box instead. A few moments, broken only by the open and closing of drawers and Hancock’s frustrated, “This might shock you, lover, but there’s nothing here.”

“I’m stunned,” he said, his voice a bit tight. He got the box open, but the wires within were nearly melted into each other. He pulled out his pocket knife and started carefully looking at each wire. He couldn’t go by colors – the plastic casings had all melted together some time ago – but he could still follow the lines of copper up and around, if he just paid careful enough attention.

Several minutes and two careful cuts later, the buzzing got louder. He snipped the last wire and turned.

The wall opened up with a loud whir, the gears grinding raucously after so long unused. Hancock covered one melted ear with his hand and held his gun out to the room, but even when the gears stopped turning and the door in the wall settled, nothing came at them. He lowered his weapon. “This ain’t normal.”

“You got that right.” He stepped forward to stand beside Hancock. Pure metal lined the walls of the corridor within. Shen pursed his lips. He knew very well what something like that could be. “The military had places like this set up around the country,” he said. “I had to help build one, once.”

“And you haven’t taken us there why?”

He snorted. “It’s on the other coast, Hancock.” Hancock grunted, accepting that explanation. Shen shook his head. “They used these places to hide some of their weapons caches, in case…”

“What?” Hancock asked, his tone suddenly dry as dust. “In case of some nuclear attack?”

Shen’s lips thinned, remembering the mad dash for the shelter. Nora holding Shawn tight, whispering soft, blanket promises of everything being okay. The sight of his son, suddenly so much older than him. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Hancock said. Shen caught the man looking at him. He tried on a smile, only for Hancock to scowl. “Don’t play that with me.”

“Right.” He looked away. “Guess I’m still working on it.”

“Yeah.” Hancock didn’t say it – that Shen didn’t have to ever be okay. That being broken by his past was normal, expected, even healthy, arguably. He didn’t say it, because both of them knew it, and neither of them were capable of accepting it. “Let’s grab some loot.”

“Sounds good to me.” They both moved to the door, only for Shen to stop. He moved to one of the boarded up windows and looked out. They’d killed every raider nearby; that was all the more proven by the fact that no one had interrupted them as he’d worked to unlock the door. Still, the fact that they’d uncovered something this big made him paranoid. As if others could sniff out loot and come crawling out of the woodwork to try to take it.

Hancock whistled. “We hit the jackpot here.”

Shen turned – just in time to see the wall slam closed. He yelped. “Hancock!”

The humming was suddenly louder than ever before. Hancock cursed. Shen ran to the wall and slammed his hand against it, though he already knew it was useless. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”

Hancock was silent for a heartbeat too long. “Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled slightly by the wall. “I’m fine for now.”

 _For now_. Something was happening. He cursed and raced back to the tiny console. “Tell me what’s happening,” he ordered. He looked at the mess of wires and bit back on the rest of the expletives on the edge of his tongue, silencing himself for Hancock’s reply. He’d thought he’d done it right. No, he _had_. The door had opened. But what he _hadn’t_ done was use the numerical keypad. He might have set off a trap. “Hancock!”

Him yelling at Hancock would not usually achieve positive results. It was likely the barely suppressed panic that got Hancock talking. “There’s a bomb.”

Shen’s heart stopped.

“What?” he breathed. The sound was probably too soft. Hancock likely hadn’t heard it.

He stared blindly at the console for a single heartbeat longer, his mind whirring. It wouldn’t open; this was a trap. His fault. He should have seen it coming. This was a military operation. Without the ability to hack the console, he had thought to do the next best thing. But opening the room up without using the correct code would have set off the trap. No matter what he did now, without the correct code, he would never get the door open again. Searching for it would take too long, and he had no real way of knowing which combination of those four numbers was correct. And since he’d decided to look around after opening the vault instead of heading straight inside, he’d left Hancock alone within. Hancock, who had no experience with engineering whatsoever.

His hands trembled. He turned and ran back to the wall. “Tell me what it looks like.”

“Shen…”

“Hancock, I know bombs. You’ve seen me disengage countless mines and traps. I know what they look like. If you tell me, I can help you disarm it.”

Hancock sighed. “I have no idea how to describe it, and the countdown is only giving me five more minutes.”

Five minutes. Shen’s hands shook harder. “Then tell me the big details – any numbers or codes you can see. Any batteries or energy sources. Wires. Symbols. Buttons. Lights.”

Hancock was silent for several moments; Shen couldn’t tell if he was muttering under his breath or looking around or _what_. His eyes burned so badly he could barely see. He gritted back the tears, the fear, the shivering that had traveled up his hands and into his arms and legs. His nails scratched into the wooden wall as he listened, the world watery around him as he forced his breathing to stay even. Finally, Hancock spoke. “I can’t lift the thing to check the bottom, but there’s no sign of numbers or letters anywhere. No sign of a source of energy besides the connection to… I guess to the keypad you used.”

Just as he thought. All right. All right, he told himself, blinking rapidly until he could see again. It was something. “Any wires on the bomb itself?”

“No,” he said after a beat. “Not unless they’re on the bottom. There’s a series of buttons and switches on the right side, however.”

Shen’s mind raced. Anything with C4 would have put the controls on the top. Bombs that relied on electricity for the explosion would have likely had a screen or two up, not just ‘buttons and switches.’ They would also likely have had some sequence of numbers or letters, so that the creator could remember how he or she had set up the charges. He leaned his head against the wall and thought. ‘Buttons and switches.’ “Are the buttons larger than the switches?” he asked.

“No. They’re the same, on average. Only four minutes left.” Hancock hesitated. “You should go.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He said nothing else for a moment; they both knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “Colors?”

“None.”

Dammit. “All right.” He kept his voice soothing, swallowing back the panic and the way his eyes wanted to burn again. Fuck crying or panicking. They were a waste of precious time.

Concentrate, he told himself. No numbers, no colors, no differentiation between the pieces at all. Whoever had made this bomb had likely made several others and kept to the same rule, thus rendering a need for labels or guides moot. Which meant there had to be some unspoken law, some rule so clear it hadn’t needed to be stated, at least to the bomber. Psychology? No, he didn’t have time to try to figure out how the bomb maker would have likely planned this out. He needed to _know_. “The switches. Describe them.”

Hancock’s voice was tense when he answered. “They look like power switches, only too small for anything but a finger and a thumb. Goddammit, Shen, there’s only three and a half minutes left, and this thing is huge. There’s no time! Just get out of here!”

 _This thing is huge._ Then it had to actually have something packed within it. Shen sucked in a breath. “Is this thing sitting on top of a barrel or something?”

“It’s on the top of a giant metal box. Shen, _please–”_

“I know what to do!”

Gunpowder. It was gunpowder. The switches all led to fuses. Any and likely all of them would spark the fuses and make the gunpowder explode. The buttons would likely cut the lines to the fuses, but could also allow a snip that would again charge the line. There would be only one button that stopped the fuses from igniting, and none of the switches would be safe. _In theory_. But there was a way to circumvent all of that.

 _On the right side._ That had been the bomb maker’s clue. The one sign he’d allowed for himself, to help him remember. He would have _needed_ something, at least the first couple of times he’d made it. After that, leaving the clue had likely been habit; bombs were dangerous to make, and one needed to be careful with the set-up. Knowing how to make it had also been the bomb maker’s weakness; changing the routine would have meant changing the entire bomb, and the bomb maker hadn’t wanted to do that.

Human ingenuity, matched in power only by human laziness.

A floorboard creaked.

Shen turned his head, tensing at the sound. It was slight, still; whoever had entered the area was still far away. He pulled out his gun. _Three and a half minutes._ The further he got from Hancock, the louder he would have to speak and the faster these people would find him. He gritted his teeth and stayed where he was. People really _could_ sniff out treasure, it seemed.

All right. The gunpowder, when the bomb had first been made, would have been evenly distributed throughout the box. It would be near the top, as well, all the better for the fuses to ignite the gunpowder as easily as possible. Even with a couple of centuries to sit around, the powder would still be plenty close enough to the fuses to ignite the entire thing. And as metal as the walls of the cache was, that was how _not_ metal the clinic itself was. The place would light like kindling. Besides, the both of them were too close to the powder. They would be destroyed by the chaotic explosion. The reason people moved to C4 and such when they could was because of how uncontrollable the explosive burst from gunpowder was. Which meant the goal here was utter destruction. Nothing controlled about it.

“Less than three minutes,” Hancock said, his voice so tight his teeth must have been gritted. “Shen, promise me you’ll leave once the marker hits one minute.”

Shen’s hands curled into fists. He did not speak.

Another floorboard creaked. The person was coming closer. Likely lured by the sound of their voices. Quieter voices didn’t equal silence.

 _On the right_. “That ‘marker.’ The one telling you how much time is left. Is it digital?”

“No. It’s a dial.”

Yes. Good. Because digital would mean electric, which could mean an unintended spark. “Where is it?”

“Beside the switches and buttons, on its left.”

Hancock gave him each answer in clipped tones. He’d resigned himself to the fact that Shen would not be leaving. Good. “Which means the controls are on the very edge of the box’s surface. Right?”

“Right.”

He _did_ know what to do. “All right. Follow what I tell you, in this _exact_ order.”

They would have to be quick. He heard someone shout. It was still far away, but it could only mean one thing – the person walking around was not alone. “All right. Flick the switch on the farthest right.”

It would light the fuse, but just snipping one of the fuses would not stop the bomb. They would have to snip _all_ of them. One by one. Which meant turning on the fuses, which would activate the buttons – buttons that would, without the switches, likely be locked in place. Which meant he, in having Hancock flip the far right switch, had unlocked the far right button. Which only meant it had to be another trap; pressing that button would be the end.

Three switches, three buttons. The switch farthest from the middle of the box would have the long fuse, which meant the longest time to snip it. He closed his eyes and pictured the bomb’s fuses – little lines of rope hooked to triggers, with something like flint within. Each trigger was linked to the switch, which would cause the trigger to move along the flint, creating a spark that would ignite the rope. The buttons would be linked to a sharp point, hopefully undulled by the two centuries the bomb had spent waiting. They, when pressed, would cut the ropes at various points – one or two of them, however, would likely strike another piece of flint, thus creating a much shorter fuse.

Each of those ropes would eventually lead to the same basic position within the box, if only to ensure that they did not change the detonation time by being out of place. That place would likely have a single convergence point – one of the three buttons. A bomb maker would never make an impregnable bomb, lest he accidentally found himself in a situation where he set it off. Every bomb maker knew the dangers of the weapons they created and wanted to ensure as high a chance of safety for themselves as possible. They just didn’t want others to be able to use their cheat.

“Done. Now what?”

All right. The furthest one was lit. “Now the middle switch.”

Another shout. They were getting closer. His heart pounded in his chest. He held his gun toward the door.

“Done.”

The fuses all had to start at the top; wires would mean electricity. Something gunpowder could not afford. The fuses would rely on as controlled a spark – as controlled a _fire_ – as possible. “The last switch.”

“Done.”

From here it was a guessing game. The buttons needed only a tightly strung length of rope or string attached to the knife point to make them work. They could lead anywhere, including below the line of safety, where all the thin ropes converged. He had to hope he was reading the hints correctly. “Press–”

“Here! Found ‘em!” The voice was angry. Shen fired before he even turned, spraying the doorway with a hail of bullets even as he ducked low. One man screamed and collapsed to the ground, but another ducked down and back, away from the doorway and out of Shen’s range.

“Shen!” Hancock cried. “What’s going on out there?!”

Far right. Instinct would say that the far right was the answer. Counter-prediction would argue the opposite, that the far right was too obvious, and so it must be the far left. Thinking a single step ahead was not enough to think past the logistics of a bomb maker of any sort, but certainly not one considered skilled enough to defend the cache of a military weapons stronghold. Middle or right. How far should he look ahead? “Middle,” he tried. “Press the middle button!”

The right was obvious. Choosing the right button would mean that people who didn’t bother predicting anything would still get the answer right.

Behind the doorway, the person who’d arrived shot blindly from behind the safety of the wall. Bullets pockmarked the wall beside Shen. One slammed into the wall just inches from his head. Tiny chips of wood and dust sprayed over him. He ducked, shooting a couple of bullets, as well, just to get the enemy to hide away again.

“Fuck.” He could barely hear Hancock past the gunfire. “The dial just jumped to one minute.”

Shen cursed. That meant every single button was a part of the rigging – three threads wound into one; the flint choices would burn the thread, potentially below the line of safety. He’d thought that if even a single lit thread reached the powder, it was over. What he hadn’t thought was that every single thread could be interwoven multiple times. Which meant one of those buttons left was the correct one, and the other would likely doom Hancock. He gritted his teeth. The answer was either to take everything at face value and choose the obvious answer, or to think a single, solitary step ahead and choose the answer farthest from the obvious. Ignorance or arrogance? Which would be considered the bigger sin? Which was a trait that deserved life, and which was the one that deserved death?

The enemy shot blind again. He scooted back, but not in time to prevent a wild shot from embedding itself into his leg. His leg crumpled as heat burst like lava through his upper thigh. He grunted and slid down.

“Thirty seconds – for fuck’s sake, Shen, get out of here! I’ll take that asshole down with me!”

“I will never leave you alone!” he snapped. Even if he could, he wouldn’t. He would rather die. He would _never_ lose the ones he loved again. “The left! Press the left button!”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, ignoring the pain. He shot blindly, not caring that he missed his target. Anything to grant him the precious seconds to know if he’d doomed his lover.

If it had been the military that had set up the bomb, he would have said the right. Because to the military, the arrogance of thinking one could steal from the armed forces was a sin that should be punished with death. But to a bomb maker… to those like himself, who lived their lives on both danger and wits, arrogance was mandatory. The arrogance to think you knew best. The arrogance to play god with peoples’ lives. The arrogance to believe oneself so intellectually superior that one could create a safety precaution in their bomb and think themselves the only ones who could ever figure out the trick.

A single second slipped by. Then another. Shen bared his teeth. “Please, baby,” he whispered. “Please.”

He kept clicking his finger on the trigger of his gun – only for another burst of bullets to splatter the wall in front of him. Another bullet slammed into his side. He gasped. It slid deep; he could feel it as it sank into his skin and past his rib cage. He felt it push through just beneath his scapula. His gasp gurgled. He fell.

Slowly, the wall opened up before him.

The bullet blast was startling; Hancock had pulled out his shotgun. His lover stepped over him, shouting. He heard more pocks of the enemy’s smaller gun, then one last, loud boom. Then silence. Then footsteps, pounding up to him. “Hold on,” Hancock said. Shen did as best he could; he sucked in loud, gurgling gulps of air. Hancock stabbed him with a stimpak. “Hold on, you fucking maniac. I’m here. I got you.”

Blindly, Shen reached out to him. Despite the fact that shotguns needed two hands and there could be more enemies coming, Hancock propped his shotgun on the floor beside Shen’s head and grabbed his hand tight. “You did good,” Shen managed.

Hancock chuckled. The sound was so tight Shen was surprised it didn’t snap Hancock’s vocal chords. “It was all you, handsome. All you.”

He closed his eyes. After so many times being shot, both in this time period and the one before, the feeling of his body knitting slowly back together was not new. He waited patiently until he could breathe easily again, then got to his feet. As usual, the pain of the attack was the last thing to go; his nerves kept sending the signal even after the stimpak’s stem cells completed fusing his body back together. Still, pain was manageable. He was used to that, too.

Hancock helped him up, only grabbing his shotgun again afterword. Morbid curiosity had Shen turning to look at the puddle of blood he’d left on the floor; even though it had only been a few moments, the amount of blood was not insignificant. He rubbed his thigh, grateful that that wound had also been covered up, and found his gaze caught on the weapons cache. His heart thrummed. “You’re all right?” he asked, his gaze returning to Hancock. He scanned his lover up and down.

“I’m fine, war hero.” Hancock came in close, grabbed the back of his head, and pulled Shen in for a rough kiss. Shen bit at Hancock’s skin, chased the man’s tongue with his own, tugged at Hancock’s overcoat. He pressed as close as he could, not caring that he was spreading his blood onto Hancock’s arms and clothes. He told with teeth and tongue how terrified he’d been, how nearly frozen with fear he’d felt waiting, anticipating another death, another loss. And Hancock told him with mouth and moans that he was fine, that they were both fine, and that they would be proving it to each other before the day was out.

Finally they pulled apart, both breathing heavily, both still clinging tight. Hancock chuckled. “Well, that’s certainly a warm welcome.”

“It’ll get warmer,” Shen promised. He and Hancock shared a grin. God, it was wonderful to be able to do that again. “Go loot the two dead guys. I’ll check the cache.”

Hancock released Shen and held up his hands. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice. I know when I’m out of my league. Just be careful.”

Shen nodded and moved to the opened wall. Right there, right behind the wall, so close it explained how they’d managed to hear the humming – because the wires must have been slightly vibrating against the wall – he found the bomb. He couldn’t help but turn and watch his lover as he made his way to the first body, patting down the dead man’s pants and shirt and pocketing anything of any worth. The way he bent showed off his ass to good effect. He smiled. “Love the look,” he couldn’t help but say. In response, Hancock wriggled his ass. Shen laughed.

He headed inside the cache. For all this trouble, the loot had better be good.


End file.
